{"id":190559,"date":"2015-01-29T04:00:38","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T18:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=190559"},"modified":"2015-01-29T04:00:38","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T18:00:38","slug":"boe-member-frets-future-federal-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/boe-member-frets-future-federal-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"BOE member frets over future of federal funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

A CNMI State Board of Education member cited the \u201cmoods of Congress\u201d in her concern over the Public School System\u2019s growing dependence on federal grants for some of its most essential programs.<\/p>\n

\"Ada\"<\/a>
Ada<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At a board meeting on Tuesday, acting chair Marylou Ada asked if there is any contingency plan in case any programs were eliminated or reduced.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to think in that direction sometimes, because I see that increasingly we\u2019ve been so dependent on federal money. It makes me scared that someday or tomorrow, by a stroke of a pen and by a bill introduced in Congress, one of these programs will disappear, and then what are we supposed to do? Is there a contingency plan in the event any of these federal grants get reduced or eliminated so we don\u2019t jeopardize these programs?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

Ada directed her question to federal program officer Tim Thornburg, who has been instrumental in growing PSS\u2019 share of federal funds in years past. Thornburg assured Ada by quoting former president Ronald Reagan who said, \u201cNothing lasts forever in this world except a federal program.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal always is to grow the federal share,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Thornburg also cited the recent ballot initiative, HLI 18-12, which increased PSS\u2019 share of local funds.<\/p>\n

PSS\u2019 federal grants total a little bit over $35 million, according to Thornburg in his summary report of their 14 federal grants. This rounds out to a total budget of about $62 million from local and federal sources.<\/p>\n

Ada, who is also chair of the Fiscal, Personnel, and Administration committee, said she does not want to report to the board that a program has been eliminated, when it may have been \u201cat the heart of students succeeding and going off to college and finding jobs and being independent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI really do not want to have that happen to any of our programs,\u201d she said. \u201cWe always have to look seven steps ahead, what if, what if\u2014and answer all those what ifs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thornburg said most of their essential grant programs appear intact after their review of a draft education reauthorization bill made public this month by U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, or HELP.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a copy of Sen. Alexander\u2019s draft. We went over that carefully and Title I [grant] is there, Special Education is there\u2014every one of our major education program\u2026are all there and at a reasonable level of funding. So I think we are going to be good at least for the next five years. That\u2019s as far as we can predict,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Alexander, a conservative, has been adamant in his push for the education reauthorization in a Republican-led Congress this year. His draft bill, titled \u201cEvery Child Ready for College or Career Act of 2015,\u201d is a reintroduction of sorts of a bill he pushed in 2013.<\/p>\n

How education reauthorization plays out and how it will affect the students of the CNMI remains to be seen. From the most recent data, federal funds per pupil in the CNMI have jumped from $2,031 in 2003 to $2,875 in 2013.<\/p>\n

In comparison, the local contribution per pupil was $3,306 in 2003, averaging a decline over the 10-year period, to $3,116 per pupil in 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A CNMI State Board of Education member cited the \u201cmoods of Congress\u201d in her concern…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":190608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[39,26,37,186],"class_list":["post-190559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-boe","tag-cnmi","tag-education-2","tag-initiative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}